1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of data communication over a network. More particularly, the invention provides a system and method for abbreviating the content and quantity of information sent to the viewing device over a network. The information may be an Internet or Intranet world-wide web (WWW) page with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding, XML, or other types of markup languages such as WML that utilize data frames to display information pages. The remote viewing device may be a handheld, laptop, or palmtop device with a limited viewing space for the information being received, and preferably connects to the Internet over a relatively low-bandwidth wireless radio network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Typically, handheld or palmtop devices have very limited viewing surfaces, limited memory capacity, slower processing speeds, and limited user inputs in comparison to large desktop computer systems. These devices may also communicate over a bandwidth-limited data network, such as a wireless packet data network, a cellular network using a digital packet data protocol, or they may use a limited speed modem to download information from a network. For these reasons, it is desirable to limit the data these devices receive over the network or through the modem, particularly when receiving large data files, such as framed web pages that may include text, graphics, animations, multimedia files, or other interactive elements in each frame.
A known method for limiting data transfer to such a viewing device involves restricting the transmittal of graphic information. By providing a specific configuration setting available on most Internet browsers, a user can specify that only text information is fetched by the browser. The graphical portions of the web page are left behind. This method is indiscriminate, however, and leaves the user with little useful control; simply an on or off switch for changing the type of information viewed. In many cases there are pieces of text that are not desired in the information stream, and pieces of graphics that are desired in the information stream, but the user has no control over this situation. For example, in a framed page, a common frame could provide advertisements or a navigational toolbar. Such frames would not be desirable to a user with limited viewing capability and space.
Another known method for transmitting Internet-type information to a wireless viewing device is to “spoof” the Inter-network Protocol (IP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) so that they partially work over the wireless link. This “spoofing” method, however, often leads to a failure of both the protocols and the device to display all the information.
Alternatively, several attempts have been made at using a wireless proxy to eliminate using both TCP and IP over the wireless network. A wireless proxy is a computer that terminates a TCP/IP connection on one end and a wireless connection on the other end. The most common use of a proxy is as a TCP/IP “firewall,” which is used in most companies' networks today. This proxy method removes the TCP/IP protocol from running over the wireless network, but leaves the actual data transferred untouched. This type of proxy has limited ability to further limit the higher-level information being sent to the user, and in particular the bandwidth heavy graphics and multimedia files embedded in most web pages.
Still another known method for limiting information sent to a portable viewing device is to have users pre-define the information sites (e.g., web sites) they intend to access using their portable viewing device. In this method, however, a user must pick, ahead of time, every site to be accessed and must select the information to be transferred when connecting with the wireless viewer. This selection is typically done on a desktop computer system, where visibility, memory, CPU speed and keyboard input are not restricted. The challenge for the user, however, is to have foreknowledge of every site to be accessed.
In order to reduce the information contained in frames, a prior art method, shown in FIG. 1, reduces the frame content to simple text that includes a hypertext link. The HTML page 10 includes three frames of information, frame A 12, frame B 14, and frame C16. According to this method, page 10 is first loaded into a web proxy server. The proxy server interprets the HTML code of page 10 for frame identifiers, such as the tag <frameset>, which is a brief description of the frame. For example, the tag identifiers could be “Title A” for a first frame 12, “Title B” for a second frame 14, and “Title C” for a third frame 16. An abbreviated page 18 including just the tag identifiers is then sent to the viewing device as simple text with a hypertext link to the frame 12, 14, or 16 that the tag represents. The abbreviated page 18 does not display frame content, but only the tag identifier for each of the frames. Thus, the user has no idea of what information content is included in this framed page.